Google+ VP Slams Facebook News Feed Ads

Google+, Google’s social network, has been operating for about a year now. Since then, critics have been quick to label it as a “ghost town,” yet another weak attempt by Google in venturing into social networking. A boss from the Internet giant, however, does not agree with such criticisms, according to a report from the Business Insider.

At the recent IGNITION conference, Google+’s vice president of product, Bradley Horowitz, boasts that their social network currently has 400 million registered users. There are also around a hundred million visitors who click on the website or mobile application at least one time every month. These figures clearly indicate that Google+ is not the ghost town its critics describe it to be.

Aside from talking about their social network’s impressive stats, Horowitz also slammed Facebook’s method of including advertisements on users’ news feeds. He likened the strategy to that of a sandwich board being shoved in between a discussion between a father and his daughter. This is an obvious crack at the promoted brands and ads being featured on the Facebook news feed lately.

Rather than shoving ads into users’ news feeds, Horowitz explains that it is much better to show “social recommendations” instead. When a person searches for a product on Google, for example, the results would show which of his or her Google+ contacts recommends a particular item. Aside from being useful, this certainly sounds less annoying, too.

Horowitz states that social recommendations are useful, and at the same time they do not “compromise” the users’ online experience. He even cited that unlike the other social network, Google+ does not have to make it to the next payroll by shoving up ads on their network users.